lol!

the finnish overhauled their education system, making equality the number one priority. now they're one of the best. no private schools.

eton and co just exist to prime the elite to continue being the elite.

They are also apparently on the decline, and one place higher than the UK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27314075

It's not as simple as that. And using language like 'decline' is completely misleading.

Finland's school system is light years ahead of the UK's (but bear in mind that England&Wales/Scotland/N.Ireland each has a separate system), and in my opinion the Asian countries at the top don't even come close to Finland either.

In Finland they don't do anything academic until age 7, instead focusing on learning through play and interaction with peers, which teaches valuable social skills. Their children soon catch up and take over those who started learning maths and English at 4/5.

Their system is cooperative, that is they all pool their resources and children all have the same access regardless of where they live, rather than the competitive model we have in the UK, although in Scotland they're beginning to realise that if the Curriculum for Excellence is to work, they need to be putting their heads together rather than striving to look better than every other school. There are no fee paying private schools allowed in Finland.

Finnish teachers too are the best, with their entry requirements tougher than those to become a doctor or a lawyer. Of course, they are also paid accordingly!

It's all fine and well having this league table of countries, but it kinda paints false pictures of reality. Our higher education system, which is totally ****in elitist, pulls us up the rankings a lot. But that doesn't even begin to tell us how exclusive it is, with international students, who often pay 3/4/5 times what UK kids do, given preference over natives.

The Asian system is just ridiculous. Getting beaten with a stick will never ever produce better humans than a system like Finland's, and memorising tons of information is ****ing useless.

Sir Ken Robinson has spoken a lot about schools 'killing creativity', basically through the idea that making mistakes is bad - doing so is part of the creative process (he defines creativity as 'the ability to come up with original ideas that have value'). He cites an 1800 company sample in finding creativity and adaptability as the 2 most important qualities required to compete.

I know that in recent years it has been getting better in Scotland, with schools now employing teachers to teach subjects such as drama, for example, but the problem is that it doesn't focus enough on the equality aspect that makes Finland's system so successful.

So, I agree with the 'ott' idea of TheDefiniteArticle - ban fee paying schools and focus on providing equal access to education for all children. It's difficult to see how the elite will ever 'allow' that to happen, but it's certainly something for the rest of us to strive for.

Where are you at with Grammar schools? Those are schools we have in the UK which are state-schools, but where you have to take a test to get in.

This means poor, but clever kids can get an accelerated education.

I think it leads to unnecessarily defining abilities and thus having an arbitrary gap in prospects between the best comp students and the worst grammar students. I do support streaming within schools, as it's more fluid.

I think it's also somewhat arbitrary to define a child's education using a test at the age of 11, and unreasonably caps the potential of some kids who might otherwise be able to flourish.

Great post. We have examples of this kind of education in the UK such as the famous Summerhill School. However, I didn't realise any country had taken some of the learning practices at Summerhill and applied them at national level so thanks for highlighting this example.

As far as Grammar schools go, I'm probably mildly in favour of them, however there are some compelling arguments against. I think the main reason I'm in favour is the education system in the UK does allow people to enter further education relatively easily as a mature student, so your potential isn't capped at 11, 16, 18 or whenever. Intelligence testing at 11 is also strongly correlated with GCSE results, so it's not like some crapshoot at 11 years old where lots of talent is slipping through the net.

HAHAHAHAHAHHA RIGHT ON THE MONEY!!!!!!

This left wing thuggish class warfare is doing nothing good for my country.

Can you children telling people to go home, calling people scum and assaulting people with missiles grow the **** up so you can be an effective opposition when we need one? Pretty please?

If you're talking about Class War, it's an anarchist grouping that goes back to the Thatcher era, so I doubt many of its supporters would say they are natural Labour party voters, or even left wing.

You may think it's trash but class war is crass not clash.

DEY SED DAT WE WOZ TRASH
BUT THE NAME IS CRASS, NOT CLASH
DEY CAN STUFF THEIR PUNK CREDENTIALS
COZ IT'S DEM DAT TAKE THE CASH

I assume that was the reference you were making?

Yes from white punks on hope.

I'm confused. Is this a joke? Maybe it's just my brain at the moment, but could you give me a rough idea of the similarities?

I think you've completely missed the point of this video if you think it's funny

Any politician getting an egg in the face is hillarious.

Tories can now see the upside of having all there nutters desert to UKIP.

Seems like in England there's a growing element of those who will back Corbyn regardless of what he says, like the so called '45' group of independistas in Scotland who can hear no wrong about anything that doesn't support their agenda.

That's got to be good for democracy.

Rivers of Blood 2.0

I have a friend who works as a primary school teacher. Both her and her family lifetime Labour supporters, and all voted UKIP in the last election.

Her reason for doing so was that she felt she spent too much time as a teacher concentrating on the pupils who were not good English speakers, and as a result it held back the progress of the whole class.

If push came to shove I'd vote to stay in Europe, but it's not a lock and I think a lot of people feel the same. The campaign for staying in Europe needs to address these types of issues, or we're going to find ourselves drifting towards the exit door.

It's rare for a single political issue to divide the country as much as UKIP has between city and non-city dwellers.

I despise her.

She's probably a swede eater from the provinces. They know no better.

Shame on her for critically evaluating her voting options, rather than just blindly voting Labour and crossing her fingers.

fwiw she lives in a conservative safe seat with a 17,000 majority. She also says the moment Miliband reitterated that Labour hadn't overspent in office during the Question Time debate was the moment she made her mind up not to vote Labour.

I have quite a big problem with people who decided not to vote Lab for that reason - not because I think they're wrong per se, but because 99% of them are a million miles from knowing enough about economics to form a reasoned opinion about it.